beka valentine

trans dyke hacking on @[email protected] . she/her (xey/xem or ey/em if you're bored with binaries); no child zone, 18+ only 

current twitter handle: @[email protected] 

former twitter handles: @beka_valentine @illegally_beka

Public Key

npub1dedkf2flnstav55fz9y9uwvu30srv8zs9c78xm5prruwqrv4p5xqd6j93d

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsxukmy4ylec97k22y3zjz78xwghcpkr3gzu0rnd6q3378qpk2s6rqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds7892ka

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1dedkf2flnstav55fz9y9uwvu30srv8zs9c78xm5prruwqrv4p5xqd6j93d

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-07-27 04:35:06 UTC

- reply

if you wanted more sophisticated things, you couldn't really get them except by loading in libraries, sure, but thats true today
if you wanted to get your toes wet, to get SOMETHING on the screen, you could just do it out of the box

2026-07-27 04:33:47 UTC

- reply

there is no good answer to that for modern computers
so while the C64 wasnt very powerful and sophisticated and whatever, it was so unmediated that doing things that seem imminently like Advanced Computering was just.. right at your finger tips?

2026-07-25 19:10:47 UTC

a thread you should read

2026-07-25 18:42:06 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…j2z0 @nprofile…gj0l @nprofile…j0eh surely it should be Rapa Mewey

2026-07-24 05:44:01 UTC

Disclosure Day is.. uh.. a movie

2026-07-19 03:32:53 UTC

apparently no modern stadium can hold as many people as the roman Circus Maximus's 250,000

2026-07-11 03:06:24 UTC

hate Millenial Grey? blame Restoration Hardware
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ_JIen4vV8

2026-07-09 16:30:23 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…e6c4 i cross post to twitter and bluesky, so to maintain consistency, i delete and re-write on mastodon as well

2026-07-09 16:19:19 UTC

one of these days i'll learn to proof read my posts, i promise
aww who am i kidding

2026-07-09 06:59:43 UTC

OH | wonton violence
🥟🥟🥟

2026-07-06 18:19:13 UTC

age verification laws being written in a way that impacts social media websites specifically, including federated ones, and basically has no impact on peer to peer systems, is pretty fantastic, assuming people pick up the slack and build p2p alternatives

2026-07-04 22:46:54 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wmy9 its not that its not the point. it's that you've misunderstood what i was saying.

2026-07-04 22:42:31 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wmy9 you've definitely missed the point if youre thinking like this about what i said

2026-07-04 18:25:17 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…wmy9 completely not understanding anything i said

2026-07-03 22:18:10 UTC

July 4th fireworks are starting already, making SoMa sound like its exploding. boo

2026-07-01 18:27:57 UTC

- reply

and while you might use FreeCAD and then manage to export to some other program successful, you now have to learn that other program
whereas, when you pick up a shitty Bic pen to do your drafting, constructing tangent circles is the same geometry Euclid was using 2500 years ago

2026-07-01 17:29:41 UTC

- reply

in particular, there are a lot of software-related skills which were either never properly developed into novice-friendly forms, or which were left to languish and complexity and die over the last 20 years as the idea of the novice ceased to be widely recognized as real

2026-06-27 18:43:23 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…mv7s @nprofile…vnlz accidental art, especially that last one

2026-06-10 22:51:26 UTC

reading a book about the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone, and getting inspired to pure something into my game. im 100% convinced that something interesting is doable. more importantly, i can also imagine some really interesting *narrative* connections that make it worthwhile

2026-06-01 16:12:33 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…emd4 @nprofile…t47w i periodically re-listen to the book, tho, because there's so much good stuff about people actually working to try to solve real problems, clear utopian hope, etc.
in my mind, PLATO is the predecessor of the computer on Picard's Enterprise
they also basically just solved computer based education by the 1970s, and we've completely forgotten all of the important lessons and failed to implement any of them despite the greater computerization of education now. but the path is known!

2026-06-01 16:09:47 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…emd4 @nprofile…t47w the middle section, on how users voraciously (and often illegally) sought access because the empowerment they got from the system, is the most fun part. the last part about the system's decline and collapse is depression and best avoided imo lol

2026-05-30 18:06:17 UTC

@nprofile…t47w @nprofile…emd4 i feel like FoC would really enjoy the early chapters of The Friendly Orange Glow, even if it's not deeply related to FoC specifically

2026-05-26 16:54:10 UTC

sure, you complain about the AI cliche of "Not X, but Y"
but do you complain about "No X, just Y"?

2026-05-25 21:26:42 UTC

- reply

and the cost of recycling is almost always born by local governments who pay for trash and recycling
those governments are themselves often quite cash strapped, and so they too want to avoid paying for things if they can
and so plastic typically does not get recycled

2026-05-25 21:25:01 UTC

- reply

plastic is entirely recyclable
what is missing in this idea is the why of """non-recyclable"""
and the why is: profit
recycling plastic is 100% possible, if you're willing to pay for it. but capitalists do not want to pay for things if they can avoid it

2026-05-25 21:22:46 UTC

you know how there's this idea thats gained popularity in recent years about how we were all conned by capitalists into thinking plastic was recyclable when in reality it's not recyclable?
that too is a con

2026-05-22 20:39:37 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…ytg3 i mean, gravity is definitely not a social construct

2026-05-22 18:40:31 UTC

- reply

gravity? thats real, we see it and feel it every day here, we witness it ourselves.
we do not see and feel and witness that gravity moves the heavens, we merely guess that it does, and its a great fucking guess

2026-05-12 21:43:56 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…6g65 ive read stuff on CRDTs but ive never seen anything related to structured edits. just wholistic edits

2026-05-12 21:37:42 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…6g65 i have not

2026-05-12 21:35:34 UTC

- reply

from a UI perspective, we have an ambiguity here, in terms of what is intended by the user with the single keypress
this could be resolved with different modes selected prior to the keypress, or by offering up the different options with one selected as a default

2026-05-12 21:34:04 UTC

- reply

so here we have a situation where a single key press can reasonably suggest edits that "insert" three different kinds of tree nodes:
an O node, that's like a string insertion
a T node with a gap on the right
a T node with a gap on the left

2026-05-12 21:32:21 UTC

- reply

here i'm using ? to represent gaps that must be filled in eventually

2026-05-12 21:31:57 UTC

- reply

well if we have a way of representing an as of yet un-filled portion of a tree (also called a "hole" but this type a different sort, so i'll just call it a "gap" for clarity), we can say this:
we can also add either of
T 'f' _ ?
and
T 'f' ? _
to the stack as well

2026-05-12 21:29:56 UTC

- reply

but there's ALSO a constructor `T` that takes two recursive trees
we obviously can't use that right? i mean, which subtree gets the hole? and what do we put in for the other subtree?

2026-05-12 21:28:42 UTC

- reply

for instance, i dunno, something like
data Tree = Z | O Char Tree | T Char Tree Tree
now when we press a single key, we look at step 3 and say, well, there is a unique constructor `O` that takes a char and a recursive tree, yes, indeed, so we can push `O 't' _` to the stack

2026-05-12 21:26:01 UTC

- reply

i phrased the above sequence of operations the way i did because i want to consider the possibility that our tree structure isn't as simple as lists
instead, lets imagine that its some arbitrary tree type that has many constructors some of them with char args

2026-05-12 21:23:49 UTC

- reply

now, we could view key presses as complex commands, which specifically mean that precise thing. and that's fine. but i want to generalize this and think about something a bit more eh.. rich?

2026-05-04 16:36:23 UTC

- reply

personally, I love the dry brushed/sponged look, and have spent the last few days making shaders to replicate it, but YMMV on what you like and want out of a scifi environment

2026-05-04 16:35:27 UTC

- reply

dry brushed and sponged marbling is a very common thing in B5 for wall in general, and certainly breaks things up visually, but on its own it doesn't necessarily have a scifi feel to it
if anything, it's more 80s/90s DIY home decor, which is MY scifi jam but maybe not yours

2026-05-04 16:34:08 UTC

- reply

in the case of B5's MedLab, they're checker boarded with bare painted wall behind them, which increases visual complexity by breaking up the higher-order monotony of the tiled Contour Spectrums
they're also marbled with what is like to be dry brushing or sponging

2026-05-04 16:32:21 UTC

- reply

the lesson to take away from this, tho, is that breaking up a flat wall or other surface can be done relatively easily with some interesting tiled details. they don't have to be especially complex, just complex enough to not be a big blank solid color

2026-05-04 16:27:34 UTC

- reply

and the number of teeth in the sawtooth increases, as well, and the spacing is variable
these panels show up in very few places in Babylon 5, and I'm not sure if they're used in other shows, nor what they are if not custom made

2026-05-04 16:25:09 UTC

- reply

unlike the Sonex Contours, these are not beveled panels at all, they're flat and terraced, with a horizontal zigzag/saw tooth formed by different terraces. the higher up in the stack a terrace is, the further up the vertical dimension of the panel it goes

2026-05-04 16:23:34 UTC

- reply

i don't actually know what those are, they might be a different kind of Sonex panel from the 80s/90s or they might be something different entirely, maybe custom made
here's a clearer view of their details, behind Garibaldi
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/517/228/238/058/243/original/3230cbc1a710709b.png

2026-05-04 16:21:57 UTC

- reply

these are probably NOT actually sound isolation panels but rather just material with the same checkerboard of alternative lines
either way, the motif is fairly common in scifi as well

2026-05-04 16:19:34 UTC

- reply

many different kinds of such echo dampening were used in Star Trek, and were used all over the place
but it's not just Star Trek that uses the motif! here we see a similar motif adorning Commander Sinclair's kitchen, on the top left and bottom left cabinetry
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/517/212/112/417/102/original/0eab22a7d9837030.png

2026-05-04 16:16:06 UTC

- reply

these panels are the more common echo dampening design you see, consisting of a checkerboard pattern of grooves, in this case 3 grooves, alternating between horizontally aligned grooves and vertically aligned grooves

2026-05-04 16:14:26 UTC

- reply

but wait! there's more!
more sound isolation, that is
did you think Sonex Contour's was the only sound isolation panels used? no! there's also more traditional echo dampening panels!
here's Sonex's Junior panels used as the walls of a transporter pad in Star Trek VI
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/517/192/452/453/690/original/4c11830064213ac7.jpg

2026-05-04 16:12:24 UTC

- reply

I'm sure other scifi shows have used Sonex Contour panels, too, but these are the two that I'm most familiar with

2026-05-04 16:10:07 UTC

- reply

Triline, which has three central vertical grooves
and finally Triline Corner, which has three lines extending perpendicular to two adjacent edges and then curving 90 degrees near the middle to join up

2026-05-04 16:09:04 UTC

- reply

aside from the ones mentioned above, there's also:
Classic, which is just a beveled panel
Rasiz, which seems to be a beveled panel with a smaller bevel
Horizon, with central diagonal grooves
Matrix 4 and 6, with vertical and horizontal grooves in a 4x4 and 6x6 grid

2026-05-04 16:07:29 UTC

- reply

there are in fact many kinds of Sonex Contour panels,beyond just the 3 described above, but those are the ones you see almost exclusively in TNG and B5, at least
from the below site, you can see that there's maybe 10 kinds total?
https://www.asiproaudio.com/sonex_countour_foam.htm

2026-05-04 16:05:09 UTC

- reply

"Oh but Beka that's just one place where they're used, and it's just one kind!"
oh ho ho! look at this! its a Sonex Contour Vision in another place in medlab, on the back wall of the isolation chamber!
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/517/153/858/706/700/original/2eaa1d7306331bfd.png

2026-05-04 15:59:27 UTC

- reply

these may not in fact be Sonex's but rather vacuformed plastic copies, as you can see from this thread where someone bought an actual panel from a Babylon 5 set, and it was a vacuformed styrene panel
copying was probably cheaper than buying Sonex's
https://www.therpf.com/forums/threads/medlab-wall-panel-babylon-5.360767/

2026-05-04 15:57:14 UTC

- reply

here you can see teal Sonex Contour Spectrum's behind Dr Franklin in MedLab 1, on the wall of the exam area of the medlab
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/517/120/950/190/648/original/e407e4a69150bf6c.png

2026-05-04 15:54:31 UTC

- reply

now you might think "oh these are just a star trek or TNG thing, not a scifi thing" but you'd be wrong! babylon 5 used these as the distinctive wall decor of MedLab

2026-04-29 17:03:00 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…659r ah see i grew up on the 90s scifi show version

2026-04-29 17:00:50 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…659r i havent but it looks like a revival of that style and i therefore love it
but where's the guy who talks to animals?!

2026-04-29 16:29:13 UTC

- reply

anyway, the futurismo of these shows, and the sincerity of their aspirationalism within that futurish setting, is what makes it so very TNG to me

2026-04-29 16:07:26 UTC

- reply

it feels almost imaginable that someone in 1992 could express pride in winning American Gladiator, as if that were a genuine accomplishment on par with winning an Olympic gold medal
i can't see anyone feeling similarly about WipeOut or its ilk

2026-04-29 16:06:37 UTC

- reply

and so i think that's why this kind of cringey camp futurismo versions of these kinds of shows went away and were replaced by goofball comedy versions

2026-04-29 16:04:12 UTC

- reply

caring about the future, even your own personal future, and honestly believing you can improve it is cringe, don't you know? the future can't be better, don't be so naive and childish to think you can do things, don't be a rube!

2026-04-29 16:02:29 UTC

- reply

the aspirational scifi faux-sport games of the 90s couldn't last because they inherently run counter to a core embarrassment that Americans, at least, feel about positivity toward the future, especially when that involves personal and collective choices to improve things

2026-04-29 16:00:13 UTC

- reply

but that kind of sincerity and seriousness about aspirational utopian futures is often seen as cringe, naive, and childish
so the choice is to either abandon the activity entirely or strip it of sincerity and turn it into funny haha goofiness

2026-04-29 15:58:38 UTC

- reply

the shows are very serious and sincere about how they treat it all, even tho its dripping with campy 80s low budget scifi, because there is a core mood of aspiration which is inherently utopian and future fictional

2026-04-29 15:56:21 UTC

- reply

like, the campy futurismo of those shows is so front and center, because there is a very real kind of science fictional aspirationalism to exalting people who aspire to excel in their pursuits even when they're completely dork ass things

2026-04-13 16:36:49 UTC

@nprofile…g0zc reading through Texturing & Modelling: A procedural Approach, and found a ref to your 2000 paper with Borshukov :)

2026-04-08 18:46:54 UTC

the TACO assholes won. the ceasefire is gone. Democrats got what they wanted: continued war with Iran

2026-04-05 18:00:48 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…jwpj but also, VPL's work was almost entirely inaccessible as well

2026-04-05 18:00:20 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…jwpj VPL was almost entirely in the 80s, and was rather a distinct phase of VR from the 90s wave

2026-04-05 17:23:48 UTC

its kind of frustrating that the VR scene of the 1990s produced basically 0 books about their adventures in creating the future, because they kind had no soul and no vision

2026-04-03 05:22:03 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…pklk who do i look like, nikola tesla?

2026-04-03 05:20:52 UTC

gonna invent magsafe wall power plug

2026-04-03 03:51:02 UTC

OH | I was very drunk, but I was told after the fact that my dancing, while very WHITE, was not offensive

2026-04-02 23:49:18 UTC

I can't believe NASA got JJ Abrams to film the translunar injection burn

2026-04-02 08:42:42 UTC

earthquake in SF!

2026-04-01 16:23:25 UTC

i have NEVER encountered a 3D printer that was anywhere NEAR as fussy and high-maintenance as the Bambu X-1 Carbon. it's wonderfully fast and consistent when it works well, which is most of the time, but every once in a while it just shits the bed

2026-04-01 07:24:30 UTC

Backrooms stars Chiwetel Ejiofor? amazing. he looks really different, and plays an American, it's very weird

2026-04-01 06:19:39 UTC

For All Mankind is a good show, I quite enjoy it, but it's full of shit I don't care about, like all the human drama
i want competency porn, not nonsense about Karen fucking her dead son's best friend who's now a 19 year old dipshit and how he's so in love with her. i don't care

2026-04-01 01:26:21 UTC

as someone who wears glasses, i find VR headsets to be immensely frustrating bc i have to wear them inside the headset. are there any with adjustable lenses????

2026-03-29 19:55:35 UTC

- reply

you don't care about the thing, the thing is just a means to an end for you
but thats not interesting, there's no challenges there, nor story, no compelling anything
its boring parasitism

2026-03-29 19:54:52 UTC

- reply

no one cares about how you thought it was a really foolish move to turn down an acquisition offer from IBM, because after all if IBM bought the company you could retire and never have to work on this shit ever again!

2026-03-29 19:54:05 UTC

- reply

fetishization of middle management activities and its like, who fucking cares
that's not the exciting part, the exciting part is people working hard to build some new incredible technology, the EUREKA! moments of success, the WOW! moments of wonder

2026-03-29 19:52:59 UTC

- reply

this actually reminds me of that book about timesharing that i read
almost entirely about the managerial business bullshit, and nothing about the technology, the challenges, the hurdles

2026-03-29 19:50:31 UTC

- reply

"it just devolved into games, and that's whats happening again today! the stupid users just don't understand why our failed ideas were actually superior!"

2026-03-29 19:48:22 UTC

- reply

"oh you know i had to explain to these russian guys that the way to do a startup in silicon valley is you sell to a big company and then ditch and do it again and make more money"
your companies are continuously failing b/c you're not focused on making a good piece of tech

2026-03-29 19:47:08 UTC

- reply

you get comments like "oh, you know, you have to learn that it cant just be brands making content for the metaverse, it has to be people AND brands, collaborating on things"
capitalist brained dipshits. no one likes brands you parasite

2026-03-29 19:46:00 UTC

listening to a podcast about the VRML boom of the 90s and man some of these guys are dipshit parasites

2026-03-29 19:45:01 UTC

listening to a podcast about the VRML boom of the 90s and man some of these guys are dipshit parasites

2026-03-29 19:01:38 UTC

"A Narrative Analysis of Deus Ex"
no, this is not an analysis, this is an in depth and long winded explanation of the plot points

2026-03-29 05:58:36 UTC

- reply

the same mechanism for progressive enhancement also gives us options for genre variance simply by making different choices of how to elaborate the details

2026-03-29 05:57:35 UTC

- reply

there are many ways to cache these things out, and which specific ways we pick would depend on the kind of world we're envisioning. is a fantasy setting? a scifi setting? a historically accurate setting? all have different options

2026-03-29 05:56:30 UTC

- reply

you can move with or without the use of a tool to assist you in that. without a tool you could do it by walking, running, hopping, etc. with a tool maybe you're using a boat, or a pogo stick, or a teleporter

2026-03-29 05:55:10 UTC

- reply

we can also vary what options exist for increasing the detail, because there may be many ways to buy something, actually
well, perhaps not so much for buying, but consider moving. the abstract concept of moving can be made more precise in many ways

2026-03-29 05:53:46 UTC

- reply

we can treat it like its an atomic concept with no structure, and a simulation can make use of it. its just some magical thing that happens and thats that
but we can later on add some decomposition options to enrich the simulation, like adding more levels of detail to a mesh

2026-03-29 05:52:27 UTC

- reply

something else that this approach seems to enable is progressive enhancement and modular extensibility consider for instance that if we have a very ab

2026-03-29 02:47:08 UTC

- reply

i don't care if the random people on the street have anything going on in their lives at all, my attention and focus isn't on them so they can be low behavior resolution
but the people im going to have to interact with heavily for the stuff im doing? yeah that needs detail

2026-03-29 02:45:39 UTC

- reply

does J. Random NPC need to have their daily routine simulated down to eating breakfast? absolutely not
does the target of an assassination job need that? probably! if poison is an option!

2026-03-29 02:44:48 UTC

- reply

if you want to have the player engaged in some interesting events, it's probably very valuable to simulate them down to a level where the player can jump in to interact, whereas we don't need to simulate every NPC's life just to make the world feel inhabited